Imagining Futures with Betty Grumble
Artists have always been in the business of imagining futures.
Over the month of June we're speaking to 5 artists or collectives about the futures they're imagining through their art. What does your future look like?
"The first show I toured was called Sex Clown Saves The World. It is a genre smash of styles born out of my experience as a performer and a woman. I start in a bin in a pile of garbage and finish lip -syncing (with my OTHER mouth) 'Don't Leave Me This Way' with a globe of the world on my head. Love & Anger started with another Yoni love song ('Lovin' You' by Minnie Ripperton) and ended with me turning myself into a tree/vase. I have turned myself into a Pussy Printing machine in The Unshame Machine and am currently wielding Enemies of Grooviness Eat Shit, a work that honours Grief, Pleasure and asks what Justice looks like. A Grumble future is a simultaneous love letter and war mask.
I can see that I have made work expressing my grief and hope for moving beyond the entitlement that the corporate cannibals and supremacist patriarchy have to the Earth body and to our bodies. My work in performance has always wanted to provide a space for dreaming and dealing with 'the trouble' through colliding joy and rage together. I pay respect to feminist and eco-feminist queer makers who have kept this lineage alive. Art that acts as a re-fueling station, that helps you breathe, that lights a fire under your ass, that reminds you that you do have power, that we can absolutely show up and listen and feel and mobilise. An alternative future is one that listens to First Nations knowledge, to our ecosystems - that is radically tender to the body and pursues pleasure. Grumble wants a future where we worship our aliveness and create culture together."
- Betty Grumble, artist
In 2021 we look towards:
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Commissioning a major First Nations-led project for our 2021 Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art. The future is First Nations.
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Expanding our new digital presentation platform to bring you more experimental work by Asia Pacific artists – even when our borders remain closed. The future is connected.
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Keeping artistic process thriving with at least 10 artist residencies and lab opportunities. The future is experimental.
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For nearly forty years Performance Space has nurtured, collaborated with, commissioned, developed and presented the artists who inspire us to create new futures.
Support our work bringing artists’ visions to life, at a time when we need it most.
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